Yeltsin Surgery May Be Put Off Until November

MOSCOW — Boris Yeltsin's top surgeon said Sunday that a bypass operation on the Russian president might be delayed until November to avoid risks that might further endanger his life.

Renat Akchurin, who will head Yeltsin's surgical team, told Russian television that an exact date for an operation may be decided Wednesday or Thursday when specialists meet to study test results and recommend a schedule for surgery to increase the blood flow to the Kremlin leader's heart.

"We will see how the patient is prepared for the operation," Akchurin told NTV commercial television. "Any risk should be justified. If the risk is justified, go and do the operation. If it is not, don't do silly things."

In answer to a direct question as to when he thought the operation might be done, Akchurin said: "Within one and a half or two months."

Meanwhile, a former Yeltsin press secretary said the president has liver and kidney trouble that has been exacerbated by drinking, and suffers problems with his back, hearing and blood vessels in his brain.

Interviewed on Associated Press Television, Pavel Voshchanov, who was Yeltsin's spokesman from July 1991 until February 1992, did not say what was wrong with Yeltsin's liver and kidneys but ascribed the problems to his former boss' drinking.

"Sometimes I couldn't answer questions about our upcoming plans because so much depended upon who we would have dinner with, how we would have dinner, and upon what and how many (bottles) would be standing on the tables."

Sergei Mironov, the Kremlin's chief doctor, said last week that Yeltsin, 65, did not have major liver or kidney problems but admitted that the president did have other undisclosed problems that might complicate surgery.

Yeltsin has spent a week in a Moscow hospital undergoing tests that will help a group of Russian and foreign medical specialists, including prominent U.S. heart surgeon Michael DeBakey, determine when or whether an operation is safe.